Bayswater's Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor Blog

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Have you ever written notes to yourself regarding what
you think about a particular paragraph of a book, or how it pertains to your
life? If so, we have found that you are
definitely not alone. Our discoveries
this week are of people who have done just that, and boy, has it made for a fun
time here at Bayswater.

One of
our favorite finds was tucked into the 1969 book, A Loving Wife. According to the
author, this novel is about a “nice woman nearing middle age portrayed with wonderfully
civilized grace” (whatever that means) and her journey through life as a mother
and wife. On a small piece of trucking stationary
inside the cover we found a handwritten note in response to the title of the
book. The note read, “far from the title”. We wondered, did the writer of the note think
that the character of the book was far from a loving wife or could it be that the note’s author was talking about his actual wife? Truthfully, we think it was the latter and
that notion has created many possible scenarios to build upon regarding a
trucker on the open road, gleaning advice from this 1969 book for women while
writing down a few true confessions of his own.

Another
of our favorites was found in the 2015 book, Translating God: Hearing God’s Voice for Yourself and the World Around
You. Towards the beginning, the
author writes about how he was talking to the stranger next to him on a commercial
flight and the stranger stated that he worked for oil companies and traveled a
lot. The author thought that the
stranger looked distracted, however, and when the stranger got up to use the
bathroom, the author wrote that he suspected that the man “wasn’t telling him the
truth” and that the stranger actually “didn’t work for oil companies, but was
really the air marshal”. Written on a
small card and placed with an arrow pointing to this passage was the following
message:

“Don- can I get an amen?! – Phyllis”

Did
Phyllis (whoever she was) also have experience trying to root out which
passenger could have been the air marshal during her travels? Was Don her assistant in that quest? Let us all hope that Phyllis is not in the
seat next to us next time we fly the friendly skies. Move over, Columbo…Phyllis (and possibly Don)
is on the scene.

Our featured used books are always for sale here at Bayswater and The Loving Wife can be yours for the
price of $18, as it is a first edition (and yes, you can have the note, too).
Translating God, however, is
no longer available, as it just sold last week during the used book sale. To catch up with our previous finds of the
week from the used book floor, you can always check us out at
bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook, or stop by the store!

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Here at Bayswater, we are gearing up for our annual giant used book sale event and as a result, we have been handling even more used
books than we normally do in the course of a week. That means, of course, more interesting
discoveries to be made!

This week we found the test scores for a male
student who took the National Engineering Aptitude Search Test (NEAS) as a 12th
grader in 1968. At the time, this test
was organized by the Junior Engineering Technical Society, a non-profit
organization that sought to promote engineering careers to high school
students. The test was taken using the
old punch card system, requiring that student answers be marked by punching
holes in the card to allow for what we now recognize as an early form of
computerized data entry. As you can see,
the scores were reported on one single piece of cardstock no larger than a
check. Back then, misplace your test
score report and there was no checking online to print out another. Do you remember those days?

The student who took this test (and then left it in
a book almost 50 years ago) displayed a very high aptitude for
engineering.In fact, the student scored
higher than 90% of all other students in the nation who took this engineering
aptitude test in 1968!Clearly, this
student had the makings of a top-notch future engineer.

Upon researching entrance requirements to engineering
schools during 1968, we found that scores such as these would have helped this
student to gain entrance into many top colleges and universities. The question is…did he ever go to any such
schools? Did he, in fact, become an
engineer, or did he decide to pursue another avenue, instead? Why would he
leave such a stellar score report in a random book? Did he ever show his family? Ahh, the mysteries that pour forth from our
used book floor. We could easily get
carried away with questions, here.

Our thanks to those of you who have stopped by to
see the now “famous” (as we have been told that it now is) used book floor in
our store. We even had a customer head
upstairs yesterday excitedly proclaiming her high hopes that she, too, will
discover the next gem hidden in the once loved pages that have now found a home
on Bayswater’s second floor. You never
know…

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Who needs a shovel or a map to find hidden treasures? Every day is a hunt for long lost treasures
here at Bayswater – except they come hidden in our used books. Move over, Captain Blackbeard, and make way
for the independent booksellers of Center Harbor, NH!

In our finds this week, we discovered a 1914 book
entitled, The Neighborhood Cookbook, published by the Council of Jewish Women in Portland, Oregon, for the Neighborhood House:
a non-profit organization which (still today) assists the vulnerable immigrant
populations in the city. The cookbook
contains many recipes, including an entire section labeled “Invalid Cookery”. You know we had to take a peek at that section just for fun. Upon doing so, we found that the authors insisted
that “dishes for invalids should be served in the daintiest and most attractive
way,” and the “flesh of young animals” is best to bring, as it is most tender
and easy to digest. Um…ok.

Best of all, however, was what we discovered in the book. We found a recipe handwritten on a piece of
stationary from The Carolina, a majestic hotel in Pinehurst, N.C., that opened
in 1901. In the early 1900s, The
Carolina boasted large, glamorous hotel orchestras for dancing in the ballrooms
and was known as a premier place to stay in the south. The stationary states that E.G. Fitzgerald
was the manager at that time and upon doing a little research, we found that
this was the case in 1915. This meant
that our handwritten recipe on The Carolina’s stationary was most likely from a
guest who stayed there around that time.
What an interesting find!

Don’t miss us next week as we uncover new treasures on
the used book floor (otherwise known as the alluring open seas for us
non-pirate booksellers). You can also
keep track of our finds on our website, bayswaterbooks.com, and our facebook
page.

Friday, July 7, 2017

If you
read last week's blog, (the first in our "Find of the Week on the Used Book
Floor" series) you already know that here at Bayswater, we are finding
amazing items in and among the many books we have for sale on our used book
floor. This week’s find comes in a book
published in 1889 entitled Elements of
Composition and Grammar. Yes, the
book, alone, is a great discovery, as it appears to be a first edition and is
now 118 years old. Elements of Composition and Grammar also displays a beautiful
engraved cover (see picture). But, alas,
the book was not the best find – that award goes to what we discovered in the
pages.

Perfectly pressed and sandwiched into pages 10-11 (in the “Exercises for
Dictation” chapter, in case you were wondering) was a four leaf clover that,
while we cannot be sure of the exact date it was preserved, appears to be very old and quite large. Also found a few pages later was a postcard
with a postmark of the year 1890 sent from Boston to an esquire in Boscawen,
New Hampshire. The postcard is
handwritten on the front and contains information on the back regarding the 1889
decision by government officials of the State of Vermont to use Greenleaf’s
Arithmetics book in all of the state’s schools.

While it may seem that we must spend countless hours flipping through our used books in search of our next great find, we assure you, they just appear in the course of our daily fun here at Bayswater. Be sure to check in next week to see what our next great “Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor” will be and don’t forget to stop by and check out the section for yourself!